Centre for Educational Research and Development

Schedule

Lincoln Academic Commons: A Knowledge Gift Culture

Date: 27-01-2009

Speaker: Joss Winn

Joss will discuss the idea of creating an Academic Commons at UL, including the Open Access Institutional Repository (1), Open Access Journals, such as OWPS and NEO (2), the promotion and use of Creative Commons licenses (3) for our work and the way this could contribute to the Student as Producer (4) and the potential for commons-based peer-production (5).

Structure and Agency in the Educational Development Unit

Date: 24-02-2009

Speaker: Julian Beckton

Educational development units are often expected to operate in a highly managerial context - their primary mission is seen as delivering their host institutions' strategic objectives, which are themselves derived from the external context. This seminar will discuss findings from research that shows how in practice they tend to work pragmatically with colleagues in a highly collegial fashion to achieve, but on occasion to subvert, those objectives.

The Stretched Academy and the Student Learning Experience

Date: 31-03-2009

Speaker: Aileen Morris

Many universities have become stretched in terms of increased numbers of students and a diminished set of resources. A consequence of this is that the student learning experience has, in some ways, become impoverished. This seminar will focus particularly on those students who are drawn from under-represented groups in higher education who, it is argued, are likely to experience this more keenly given the alien environment that HE represents. It is contended that universities need to re-think and engage students in more democratic forms of learning if all students are to benefit from a 'higher education'.

Dealing With the University Elders

Date: 28-04-2009

Speaker: Angela Thody

Experiences of ageing have acquired greater importance with almost 50% of England's population now almost 60. What to do with these healthy, active people in their retirement years is now attracting attention in universities as elsewhere. So what is it like growing old as an academic? As well as living this experience herself, Professor Emerita Angela Thody has also conducted a study of retired professors, the first such study in the UK. Come and find out what it could be like for you in your third age.

LearnHigher: From study skills to learning development

Date: 26-05-2009

Speaker: Andy Hagyard

This seminar will consider recent thinking in the emerging field of ‘Learning Development’ and outline the aims of this Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), of which the University of Lincoln is a part. In particular, it will trace the reconceptualisation of study skills, from a deficit model which pathologises students as ‘lacking skills’, towards a holistic developmental approach which emphasises the whole range of processes involved in learning.

Having been pioneers of an institutional approach to embedded study support in the 1990s, the university now faces renewed challenges and opportunities as it introduces a major curriculum restructure. At the same time, the implementation of Blackboard provides scope for a range of electronic resources to support students’ learning development both within and outside the taught curriculum.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Perspectives from China and the UK

Date: 30-06-2009

Speaker: Ms Tan Jing, Heibei Polytechnic University, PRC

Speaker: Howard Stevenson, University of Lincoln

In recent years there has been increasing interest in developing a scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education. This paper explores critically the concept of a scholarship of teaching and learning and
assesses to what extent it has a cross-cultural relevance in China and the UK.